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Linuxgruven Deorbits
An Anonymous Coward writes: "There's a story at Newsforge about some of the weirdness happening at Linuxgruven. Several ex-employees and students are telling what happened to them. It's not pretty." Considering the skeptical reports for months from readers about Linuxgruven's employment practices (and that we had a short story about those as well as one about the recent layoffs), this doesn't come as a complete surprise -- it's still a shame that employees are stuck with empty bank accounts because of management, though.
Linuxgruven's business failure means:
Well, there goes another warning about Linux certification. I've always Linux certifications were overrated.
The way I figure, if you want to learn Linux and networking, you can set up a 2 node network for under $200, if you look through the classifieds and garage sales. Another $100 for documentation and $20 for network cards and $50 for a printer, and you can learn more hands on with your small home network than you ever could in a classroom.
If I were a hiring manager, any wannabee Linux administrator that did not have a network at home would get a big strike against them. If you can't spend a few hundred and some time at home to polish your skills, how are you going to stay current in the office?
That would be so great! I could live on 60% of my income for 6 months, no problem. Plus a "3 salaries" severance check -- I could go to Jamaica, hang out on the beach for a couple of months, smoke pot every day, get a great tan, then go back to work.
In fact, I could set up a company, hire my buddies, work for six months, go bankrupt, then six months later, one of them could set up a contracting company, hire me for six months, go bankrupt, then one of my other budz could set up the company... Man! we could do that for ages!
Where can I sign up? Oh, do we have to speak German?
I knew nothing about Linuxgruven until the recent /. story about SAIR's disapproval of their training practices. At that time I posted that I thought that the people who thought that they could get a $45K job for just passing a test were setting themselves up, because a company that does that will never make it, and unfortunately, I was right. And you never do want to be right about something like that.
In my opinion, there needs to be a SWIFT and immediate criminal investigation of Linuxgruven's CEO Matthew Porter and their management. I believe that they were running a ponsi scheme, paying employees out of the money they were getting for "training" new people. Linuxgruven obviously never legitimately did the business they claimed to be doing. If it's not a ponsi scheme, it's close... The article suggests that new employees who jsut passed the tests were then given the job of training new victims... Which is why this smells of a ponsi scheme.
Now people who forked over a considerable amount of money for questionable education are left holding an empty bag. And employees are screwed amd left with bounced checks and bills.
Bouncing paychecks is a serious crime in some locales. I say that Linuxgruven's CEO and management need to see the inside of a jail cell.
In the Newsforge article, these bozos are planning to start a "competing" business. I'd advice everyone to stay the hell away from whatever business that is.
Unethical business practice should not go unpunished.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance